MORALITY OF A NATION

 MORALITY OF A NATION

In the information world of today, people are close to immediately updated on the happening anywhere in the world in real time. There are thousands of media channels, websites and social media apps to keep people up to date every second. As a result TV viewership especially news content may not be as high as some years back. Of all content that we consume, entertainment seems more palatable to keep us all smiles but what about news? Has someone ever noted that many times, 50% or more of what is reported is bad news? Of poor governance, corruption, burglary, destruction and murders. I have heard many of my friends saying that they cannot stand to watch news from beginning to end because everything was too negative. 

That in mind, I sometimes ask myself whether the problem was that the media stations only focussed on negative news items or that we are simply a society where evil is unbelievably high. The later could be so true if we could sit down and reflect. Just picture the destructive behaviour we saw last week during gen-z demos. It was disheartingly extreme. Talk of the breakages to loot in shops and supermarkets and the wanton arson on buildings and vehicles. It was sad and very uninteresting. That itself exonorates the media stations from blame of negative reporting. On the other hand and though an affront on media, the government's move that stopped live coverage would have been a good move to discourage more demonstrators doing more damage. 

The question is, why are we so evil as a society? Why is there no positive change in our morality and why do things seem to get worse? I guess that is why we elect new leadership evey election cycle in hope that things would change but still end up in similar or worse conditions as a nation. So, 

who will save us as a nation? Who is currently the gatekeeper of our morals? Does the church still have the moral authority to guide the nation into new dawn of morality? Should we just resign to the fact that our moral fabric is irreparably tattered and let thing be as they would? For many Kenyans, the more we hope for better days, the more we get disappointed by the happenings. Maybe the best way to start is with ourselves by doing justice to all the people we have done injustice to in the past and restitution to those from whom we have stolen before or whose debts we have not paid. That is the same condition that Jesus gave Zacchaeus the tax collector in Luke 19:1-10. After that, then we can live without doing such evils to fellow humans and teach our children and people within our circles to focus on justice and doing good. 

Could there be a better formula to change our society or is it an impossibility? I would be interested to know.

@Stephen Mungai